THE LIVES OF OTHERS
Written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Starring: Ulrich Muhe, Sebastian Koch, Martina Gedek and Ulrich Tukur
Watson scale (0 being worst and 6 being perfect) 5.5

Reviewed by Clement von Franckenstein

This amazing directorial debut from young writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck swept this year's Lola Awards (Germany's equivalent of the Oscars), winning Best Film, Director, Writer, Actor (Muhe), Supporting Actor (Koch) and Production Design.

Set in East Germany in 1984 prior to Glasnost and ending in 1991 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the film concerns the G.D.R. (German Democratic Republic) ruled over by the S.E.D (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands). The public was kept in line via the Stasi (East Germany's ruthless secret police), who employed roughly 200,000 of its seventeen million people as informants, spying on their fellow countrymen. Particularly vulnerable were those who "thought differently," who were too free, too spirited, above all people in the arts.

Capt. Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe, best known for his leading role in Michael Haneke's FUNNY GAMES and as Dr. Mengele in AMEN by Costas Gravas) is a loyal, dedicated humorless officer in the Stasi who accompanies his boss and former class mate Lt.Col Anton Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur) to the premiere of a new play by brilliant playwright Georg Dreyman, played by Sebastian Koch. There they run into Arts Minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme) who secretly lusts after the play's gorgeous leading lady, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedek). She also happens to be George Dreyman's live-in lover.

To rid himself of his rival, Hempf asks Grubitz to have Dreyman's apartment bugged, as he "doubts" his loyalty. Once this is accomplished, Captain Wiesler is put in charge of eavesdropping, including all conversations and even the couple's lovemaking.

Initially Dreyman is loyal to the S.E.D., but when one of his mentors commits suicide he can stand it no longer and agrees to write an anonymous piece in the famous Der Spiegel newspaper about how the S.E.D. has for years suppressed news of high profile suicides within the party.

Wiesler has enough to convict him, but strangely his cold facade has begun to crumble as he becomes involved in "the lives of others" and sees that love, art, music and humanity are far preferable to his cold hollow existence. He also begins to fall in love from a distance with Christina-Maria, so we have the fascinating sub-plot of her being loved by three different men. Lustfully by Minister Hempf, who forces her, out of fear, to have sex regularly in the back of his curtained limo, ardently by her lover Dreyman, and platonically by Captain Wiesler.

There is one great scene where Wiesler summons "Dutch courage" via double vodkas to approach her at a bar table and offer her solace when she is at her most desperate. She finally cracks under interrogation by Wiesler (forced to do so by Grubnitz who suspects he is withholding information) and informs on her lover under blackmail from illegal drug use and the threat of losing her acting career. However Dreyman survives, Wiesler is banished to becoming a lowly postal carrier and the film has a beautiful bittersweet ending that I cannot divulge.

For those who admire low-key acting at its finest, Ulrich Muhe's work in this film is utterly brilliant. His face hardly changes throughout the film, and yet he projects a vast array of emotions from within, as his whole life slowly changes around him. Sebastian Koch (who is excellent as the lead S.S. officer in Paul Verhoeven's new World War II Dutch resistance film BLACK BOOK) also does superb work as the tortured playwright who finally summons the courage to fight back.

Martina Gedek poignantly portrays the weakness of the doomed actress, hating herself for submitting to the brute Hempf and still trying to sustain a relationship with her lover, while Ulrich Tukur and Thomas Thieme are magnificently repulsive as Wiesler's ambitious boss and the jealous loathsome Arts Minister.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS should be the favorite to win this year's Best Foreign Film Oscar. It examines the metamorphosis of a man's soul as few films have done before.